RapidConnect Helps WakeMed Regain ACC Heart Failure Accreditation

"We are thrilled that we can now be notified immediately through RapidConnect, when a provider enters a consult in EPIC. The great part is that the sender does not have to decide whom to notify. RapidConnect does that for us.”

WakeMed Adult Medicine APP Director

In 2016, WakeMed was at risk of losing their American College of Cardiology (ACC) Heart Failure Accreditation (after not meeting their goal of having 75% of patients diagnosed with heart failure scheduled for a follow up visit within 7 days of a hospital discharge). The hospital initially tried to increase the number of follow-up visits by training their Advance Practice Providers (APPs) to use Epic’s Cadence module to schedule those appointments.

While they saw a significant increase in appointments scheduled, up from 35% to 69%, they fell short of their 75% goal. The biggest gap was with patients admitted to non-cardiology services and for patients discharged after hours and on weekends. Those patients were leaving the hospital before a follow-up appointment could be scheduled and/or added to their discharge papers.

The WakeMed Cardiology and Hospitalist group was motivated to help regain their ACC Heart Failure Accreditation. This group of providers had already been using RapidConnect for their primary hospital communication and recently heard of the platform’s integration with Epic. They consulted MD Interconnect and worked together to create a solution.

PROBLEM

SOLUTION

Creating an Epic Solution

Thanks to that collaboration, an automatic message is now sent through RapidConnect when heart failure discharge orders are created in Epic. That message is routed, in real-time, to someone who can schedule the follow-up appointment before the patient is discharged. The average RapidConnect read time for these discharge order messages is now 13 minutes. The heart failure follow-up appointment is quickly scheduled and that information is included on the patient’s discharge summary.

Exceeding Goals with new Workflow

This new RapidConnect order discharge workflow went live in November of 2017. For the first time ever, WakeMed exceeded their goal with an 85.9% appointment follow-up rate by the end of November. By the end of 2017, WakeMed had scheduled 47 follow-up appointments. As a result, they regained their accreditation and received a Silver Plus AHA award.

“We are thrilled that we can now be notified immediately through RapidConnect, when a provider enters a consult in EPIC. The great part is that the sender does not have to decide whom to notify. RapidConnect does that for us,” explained the WakeMed Adult Medicine APP Director.